Listening to "Crazy" People

I am waiting for the train to Xindian (red line) at midnight at Taipei Main Station. An older Taiwanese man with dark, wrinkled skin walks up to me and says in heavily accented English: "I give you heart analysis. I read you energy tell you how you improve you health."

This is interesting to me. A Taiwanese businessman standing next to me starts getting nervous. His nervousness looks like it is mixed up with a little irritation. A frown starts to form on his face.

I ask the energy-reader if he does qi-gong. I ask him if he has a namecard. My train will arrive any minute.

A young Taiwanese policeman walks up to the guy and he doesn't look pleased. "I've seen you here before, talking to passengers. You better stop it," he says in Mandarin, intimidatingly. The old guy responds with some words I don't understand. I want to tell the policeman that he isn't bothering me.

My train has just arrived, and with the police on his ass, Energy-Reader Guy needs to go now, but not before he turns to me and says, "Go to sleep earlier and you will feel better."

I don't think it takes a super-psychic energy reader to know that I've been going to sleep pretty late recently, but I appreciate the reminder.

Reminds me of another experience I had waiting for a train, in the Bay Area.

It was early 2006, and my whole life was about preparing for the California State Board exam in Chinese Medicine. I was walking my bike to the end of the platform at a BART station (that's San Francisco's subway system), thinking about some concept in acupuncture, maybe a location of a point. This was what my life was life in those days. I was studying between four to eight hours a day. Chinese Medicine was the air that I breathed.

Suddenly, I heard someone talking loudly and looked up. It was an African American man about ten feet in front of me. He was strutting on the platform, as if he were performing in a play, and his character was pretty upset. His voice was aggressive and his words were timed with his step.

"Ya body got energy," he proclaimed, almost as if he were preaching to a congregation sitting in the tracks. He paused, and a few seconds later, he finishes his thought, "it's called qi (氣)."

I am in a little shock. I am in my little world of Chinese Medicine, and this guy, who seems to be a little crazy, maybe homeless, shakes me out of my thoughts, talking about Chinese Medicine.

For a second, I realize that somehow we are connected, that there is something greater than our little worlds. That life has meaning if we pay attention, and we are part of a greater web of being.